Pesto Gorgonzola Pasta Salad - Taste and Create

For this month's Taste & Create, I was paired with Marthe from Culinary Delights.  Marthe is a blogger living in the Netherlands and let me tell you, she has a ton of recipes on her site! I definitely had my work cut out for me when it came time to choose one to try for myself.

This recipe includes so many ingredients which are near and dear to my heart - pasta (naturally), gorgonzola, tomatoes, pesto...mmmmm....It was almost a no-brainer once I found it!

For the record, I made the following changes: I used a whole wheat pasta, and for some reason I couldn't find shallots when I was at the grocery story so I had to do without.  I'm sure that the shallots add a nice zing to the recipe and I definitely missed them in the finished product (recipe calls for 1 finely-diced shallot).

The supporting characters: 10 grape tomatoes, gorgonzola, cucumber, olive oil and pesto.

Mmmm...hello there, you creamy dreamy thing...

Tomatoes were quartered, cheese was diced and crumbled (1/4 cup was used), and 1/2 of the cucumber was diced.

2 dry cups of pasta was cooked, rinsed in cold water and drained well.

Pasta, veggies and cheese were mixed together.  Then I added 1 tbs of pesto...

...and a tbs of lovely, fragrant, wonderful olive oil.

Salt and pepper to taste, and here's the finished product!

Yummy!

This is really delicious - the contrast between the crunchy, fresh cucumber and creamy, pungent cheese? Unreal.

Now that I'm thinking about it, when I make this in the future (and I will...oh, I will), I might add a bit of lemon juice to it or maybe even a bit more pesto and finely chopped walnuts.

The possibilities are endless!

Enjoy!